THE CHARLIE CHRONICLES
by Bob Hall
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THE CHARLIE CHRONICLES
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by Bob Hall
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Last issue I told you about the real Terminal Bar; this time I want to tell you about my real, hell-raising Uncle Charlie. Unlike Charly Donovan, he was not a terminal alkie, but he did love to binge on beer and whisky. At such times he would get into fights, chase women and see the devil (horns and all) sitting on the foot of the bed. Needless to say, Charlie was my boyhood idol.
He'd show up at my mom's kitchen -- usually well after midnight -- begging some coffee before venturing home to the Dread Aunt Sylvia, scourge of his life. There was an undefined but well established ritual to this. Mom, who worshipped the ground Charlie swaggered on, would first forbid him entrance, telling him to go home. Charlie, a shadow behind the summer screen door, would refuse to leave. "Godammit, Marge, what kinda sister are you that you won't have one beer with me?" "There's no beer in the house, Charlie." (There never was.) "I brung some, Marge." (He always did.) My Dad remained silent during this interchange, waiting for Mom to acquiesce. Only then could he slowly sip one of the forbidden brews Charlie would force upon him.
Being nine or ten, I was supposed to remain in bed when Charlie was in one of his "moods." During the school year there was no way around this, but in summer there was a chance I could procrastinate going to sleep if I thought it was going to be an Uncle Charlie night. I'd know he might be coming because the Dread Sylvia would have been on the phone all evening. "Marge, Charlie's gone again. He must be at the beer joints, hanging out with them Mexicans. Have you seen him?" If Charlie saw I was still up, he'd insist I stay in the kitchen while he told stories about the hard luck of life, his many travels and his many fights. When my Mom's back was turned, he'd sneak me a sip of his beer.
Until I was six, Charlie had lived in the promised land of California where he had a wife and four daughters. Then, out of the blue, he was on our doorstep, having left his family to run off with Sylvia (who'd yet to turn really "dread"). Oh, the scandal! Wife coming from California. Sylvia skulking about. Wife going back to the coast. Charlie following. Sylvia left in despair. Charlie back in town. Hushed conversations. Weeping and wailing. For me, Charlie was a welcome breeze stirring the stale air of 1950s Nebraska.
Charlie married Sylvia. She quickly -- and not without reason -- became "dread" and he started disappearing to hang out with people she defined as "undesirables." This sweeping category included not only white trash (like all of us) but also Mexicans, Blacks and Indians who, Charlie said, made the hottest chili, had the best music, and told the best stories.
Then after midnight he would show up at our house to relive his adventures. "There I was just sittin' in this bar, talkin' to some girl. We weren't doin' nothin' -- she was too young fer me anyway -- when up comes her boyfriend, calls me an 'old man' and sucker punches me off my bar stool. Well this pisses me off, so I roll over and sink my teeth in his leg like a rattler and don't let go." "Did you hurt him?" Charlie winked at me, ground his molars loudly, then used them to pry open another bottle of beer (this was way before twist offs). That was Charlie's last bar fight. He was in his sixties. The Dread Sylvia had her way and they moved back to California. She became senile and, when Charlie was eighty, she died.
Charlie married Sylvia's nurse. She was thirty years younger and had a shelf full of trophies from racing stock cars. What's more, she was Black. Oh, the wailing and the weeping! Oh, the family scandal! Oh, to be able to raise so much glorious hell as an octogenarian!
Charlie died last year at the age of eighty-three, still in the midst of life, still my idol. I dedicate this book to him: the real Uncle Charlie.
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from Armed and Dangerous Issue 6
published by Acclaim Comics, Inc.